Peroxide Based Organic Explosives

In recent years progressively increasing terrorist activities, which use homemade explosives; such as acetone peroxide and other cyclic organic peroxides have led to worldwide awareness by security and defense agencies. Then the development of methodologies for the detection of cyclic organic peroxides have become an urgent need. Until quite recently, most of the current technology in use for trace detection of explosives had been unable to detect these energetic compounds. Differences in physical properties between cyclic organic peroxides is the main barrier for the development of a general method for analysis and detection of the peroxide explosives. In this short review, the most relevant contributions related to preparation, characterization and detection of the most important cyclic organic peroxides have been presented. It also includes few recent investigations about the toxicity and metabolism of some peroxide explosives.